My translation from Spanish of the short story “Proxima One” by Caryanna Reuven has just been published by Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine! Read it here. A machine intelligence called Proxima One sends probes into the galaxy to search for intelligent life, and the probes must cope with the surprising things they discover.
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What happens at a science fiction convention? I’ve written a report about the most recent Windycon, a Chicago regional convention. It’s the longest-running convention in the area, now in its 50th year. About 1000 people attended, and it fell like a busy but relaxed weekend with friends and family. Read it here at the Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation website.
I read this short book before it became a finalist for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work, and it’s a timely choice that deserves the attention the nomination brings.
The author, Jordon S. Carroll, discusses the ways that alt-right/fascist/White nationalists have long used popular culture to promote their ideas, including science fiction, fantasy kingdoms, and superheroes. Alt-right readers, he says, are willing to convince themselves that the future in science fiction is a blueprint for their hopes. This explains their objections to Lt. Uhuru in Star Trek. Black people don’t belong in their future.
Speculative Whiteness shows how these ideas really belong to the past, and how alt-right expectations are self-contradictory in any case. The book includes copious footnotes and ends on a hopeful note: “the alt-right promises a bold new future in space but it never achieves escape velocity from white supremacy’s perpetual present.”
However, the book was published in October 2024, and a lot has happened since then. The alt-right won the US presidential election and many other political offices, and our present seems to be slouching toward a future that only the alt-right wanted.
Here are some articles that extend the focus of the book into the present:
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The trade paperback edition of Usurpationwill be released on October 21, 2025. Plan ahead!
You might have an idea for writing a work of fiction, but is it flash fiction, a short story, a novel, or an epic trilogy? It can be frustrating to begin what you hope will be a short story, but soon it’s grown too long, and you don’t have time for a novel right now. Or, you might start a novel and run out of steam because there isn’t enough of an idea to fill all those pages.
Here are a few ways to help you evaluate your idea before you start.
• How many scenes can you imagine? A novel might have 80 scenes of 1,000 words each, and a short story just a few scenes.
• How many plot points can you imagine for a three-act outline, Hero’s Journey, or other novel plotting tool? A shorter piece may have only one or two pieces of the plot.
• Can you imagine the story as a picture? The artist El Greco will help illustrate this concept.
A simple picture can be a short-short story. Boy Lighting a Candle, by El Greco, 1571.
This story might be:
“The little glowing fairy was fragile and needed help to stay alive.”
Add a few more characters, and you have a longer short story. An Allegory with a Boy Lighting a Candle in the Company of an Ape and a Fool, by El Greco, 1577.
This story might be:
“The little glowing fairy was fragile, but it attracted too much attention, and the boy didn’t think he could keep it safe.”
With more characters and more conflict, you might have a novel. The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind, by El Greco, ca. 1570.
This story might be:
“The protagonist’s unusual but successful medical techniques often got him into trouble, and eventually he faced a death sentence.”
A big canvas with a lot happening could well be a trilogy. Burial of the Count of Orgaz, by El Greco, 1586. The painting is 15 feet / 4.5 meters tall.
This story might be:
“The Count’s death unleashed an epic conflict between men and God.”
(Notice the lack of women at the Count’s funeral. That could become an important plot point in the story.)
Exercise
Think of an idea you’ve been playing around with. Try to imagine it as a work of art. Would it fit nicely on a postage stamp? It might be flash fiction. Would it fill a wall-sized mural? You might have an epic. The goal is to avoid unpleasant surprises when you finally start to write. If you need an idea, here are a few:
• A medical team must decide if it can ethically flee a deadly situation.
• A technology company begins to operate in increasingly illegal activities, but the change is so slow and the money is so good that one of the engineers, who becomes deeply troubled, can’t afford to quit.
• A family living in a haunted house refuses to believe in ghosts.
• Two individuals initiate a series of gift exchanges, and the gifts tell more about the givers than they realize.
• Friends witness the breakup of a family from different perspectives and have different opinions.
“For centuries, we’ve measured intelligence through a profoundly narcissistic lens. We’ve built entire philosophical and scientific frameworks around the idea that cognition is a uniquely human trait — a linear progression of thinking that starts with simple organisms and culminates in our own supposedly superior consciousness.
“Sue Burke’s Semiosis isn’t just a science fiction novel. It’s a radical dismantling of those comfortable delusions.”
Besides an article and podcast, there are study materials: References, Executive Summary, Briefing Document, Quiz, Essay Questions, Glossary, Timeline, Cast, FAQ, Table of Contents, Index, Polls, 3k Image, and Fact Check.
You will find spoilers — and a lot to think about.
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My translation of “The Coffee Machine” by Celia Corral-Vázquez has been nominated for the 2024 Best Translated Short Fiction Award by the British Science Fiction Association. It was originally published at Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here. See the full list for the awards here. The winners will be announced at Eastercon, April 18 to 21.
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A new review of ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado, which I translated, is at Strange Horizons Magazine. Reviewer Rachel Cordasco writes: “ChloroPhilia — an unsettling, enticing novella about evolution in overdrive — is Cristina Jurado’s most recent work in English. Like her collection Alphaland, which came out in English in 2018 and then was reissued in 2023, ChloroPhilia offers readers Jurado’s unique vision of the world, in which the bizarre and grotesque erupts into the mundane world.…”
Sue Burke 